Campaign Receipts Down from 2007 – Can Super PACs Make Up the Difference?

Sanders and Carson continue small donor lead; Clinton and Bush lead among the “maxed out”

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Fundraising by presidential campaign committees, both Democrat and Republican are significantly behind 2007 levels, which was the last time there was an open race for the Presidency. By the third quarter in 2007 all candidates for president has raised a combined $420 million dollars, $245 million for Democrats and $175 million for Republicans. This year the combined total is $273 million, 35% down from eight years ago (see Table 1).

If we were to add in the money we know has gone into Super PACs supporting candidates this gap would be easily made up. Although Super PACs won’t report activity for the second half of the year until January, Super PACs supporting presidential candidates reported raising over $240 million dollars as of June 30th. However, the Super PAC money comes with some question marks. We know from 2012 that Super PACs can purchase effective media ads. It remains to be seen whether they can make up for deficits in a campaign’s core staff operations. Two candidates, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, have already withdrawn from the campaign despite the money raised by each of their supportive Super PACs.

In third quarter fundraising, Bernie Sanders raised almost as much as Hillary Clinton ($26.1 million to $28 million in primary money). Ben Carson raised more than any of his GOP rivals ($20.5 million), but large portions of Carson’s money is being used for his fundraising. Jeb Bush ($13 million) and Ted Cruz ($11.7 million) were next among the GOP candidates for the quarter, with Walker, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Donald Trump following in that order (see Table 1).

Large & Small Donors

There continues to be a great disparity in fundraising strategies among top candidates. Jeb Bush’s campaign committee has raised 91% of its money from donors who gave $1,000 or more in the aggregate and 71% from donors who have “maxed out” at $2,700. Hillary Clinton’s fundraising is also strongly weighted to larger donors with 74% from donors giving $1,000 or more and 64% from $2,700 donors (see Table 2).

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson have excelled at bringing in dollars from small donors. Sanders raised $28.2 million cumulatively through September 30 from donors who gave $200 or less; Carson raised $18.2 million. Next were Clinton ($12.7 million or 17% of her primary total) and Cruz ($9.7 million or 40%).

Cash on Hand

Despite a wide disparity in their cumulative campaign committee receipts, cash on hand for the final three months of 2015 was very similar among competing candidates. Hillary Clinton had $31.5 million in primary funds available, to $27.1 from Bernie Sanders. Clinton has outraised Sanders by $36 million cumulatively, but has a higher “burn rate” because of early organizational spending for core staff and in states with primaries after the first few. On the Republican side, Carson, Cruz, Bush, and Rubio each had about $10-12 million in the bank as of September 30 (see Table 1).

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The Campaign Finance Institute is the nation’s pre-eminent think tank for objective, non-partisan research on money in politics in U.S. federal and state elections. CFI’s original work is published in scholarly journals as well as in forms regularly used by the media and policy making community. Statements made in its reports do not necessarily reflect the views of CFI's Trustees or financial supporters.